Spell

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. It's called "Spell."

We open on a woman trying to unlock a cell door on a moving carriage. A title card tells us helpfully, "France 1604." A woman says resignedly, "It won't open!" She says they must get out of there before they reach the fields. Nice English there. Also? Nice use of contractions in English in 1604 France. They must have taken Advanced Twenty-First-Century English at Middle Ages France State University. The defeated woman sits to an equally downtrodden lass, who's like, "That sucks! Totally!" "Isabelle?" the other girl asks. A much less freaked-out-sounding Isabelle says, "They've taken my book, and with it our powers. What would you have me do?" she asks. Yeah, bitches! Why you always gotta be asking Isabelle for help? She's not, like, God or something. One of the scared girls says they're running out of time. "Time is the one thing we do have," Isabelle says. Anybody up for some Jenga? Isabelle, who is wearing a red hood that covers her eyes, promises that if they fall tonight, they will rise again to complete their quest. Yeah, hey, Isabelle, about that falling part...? Could we skip that? Nice, hood, by the way. Are you Raiden? Or Falstaff? Or Borrow-beer, or Tanis or Ling-lee of Tammerway or some shit?

Something crashes, and the rolling cage comes to a stop. A horse whinnies. Isabelle, who looks a bit from the face like a certain preternaturally perfect being who appears on this show every week, flinches instinctively at the sound of it. Meteor, no! A cloak is pulled from the cage to reveal a suddenly loud throng of mobbing peasants. Nice of them to stay quiet for that. They're like, "Surprise! Now burn!" One guy says, "She turned me into a newt!" Another guy says, "A what?" Then the newt guy mumbles, "...I got better." Then everybody goes, "BURN THEM ANYWAY!" Some Friar-looking dude unlocks their cage and pulls the three ladies out. "Come on sisters, into the fire with y'all." This episode's torches provided by Larry's Torches and Mob Pitchforks. If you're ever in the Vancouver area, you could do a lot worse than getting your angry mob torches at Larry's.

The two scared witches are freaking out as they're led through the mob, while the one in the red cloak and hood just ducks her head and gets through it. She's obviously seen lots of celebrity perp walks. One guy watching has an axe to grind. No, really, he has an axe to grind. That thing's dull! Somebody pulls the hood off of Isabelle. Hey, wait a minute -- that's Lana Lang! What the FUCK!? Oh I get it. It's not enough that Lana Lang has to be whining in every episode: now she gets to do it across the fabric of human history as well. How very Voyagers. Sometimes I fucking hate this show. WitchLana gives everybody a "Fuck you!" look as we hear something nearby growl angrily. Oh, wait, that's me. Sorry. Wow, my jaw really hurts all of a sudden.

There are several close-ups of a guy who looks to be the mob leader. He looks like he just ate about twenty quail, and damn you if you try to get in the way of his delicious dessert: burning French ladies. WitchLana gives him a dirty look, but he's not worried. He's not the one about to be tied to a stake. Mmmm...stake. WitchLana playfully asks the quail-snarfing magistrate Wilkins if he's come to admire his handiwork. He rears back and smacks her right in the face: "Bitch! Don't be talkin' 'bout my handiwork!" It doesn't sound like a smack, though. It sounds like an orange hitting the floor. The dude -- who's trying to sound like Vin Diesel -- talks about the three stones of power. Mick Jagger. Keith Richards. Ron Wood. Sorry, Charlie Watts. The magistrate tells WitchLana that she may still escape the flames. With her ratty but perfectly stage-managed tousled hair, WitchLana asks for her book. She says there's a page marked. It's chapter four of The Seven Hexes of Highly Successful Witches. The magistrate just happens to have the book handy, the NecroLameicon, and has it opened to a page. "What means this?" he asks of a page with the tattoo symbol from Lana Lang's back, and illustrations of what looks like a barmaid dancing. This be the centerfold. Try not to get it dirty, because my roommate Steve totally wants to hang it up in his dorm room later. The magistrate insists that he only reads the NecroLameicon for the articles! No, really! "It means that the stones of power shall be mine," says WitchLana. So it's a leather-bound ancient Amazon.com wish list, then? WitchLana tells a clearly pants-pissing magistrate that once she possesses the stones, he'll tremble at her feet, and her "kind" will no longer be persecuted. Yeah, except you're about to be burned at the stake, so...I'm thinking that's a "No" on your power stones. Just when I start to think this witch may be a tiny bit sexy, WitchLana spits blood right onto the page of the book. Aw, man! That was a first edition! Couldn't you have just spit on the book jacket? Man, lady, you are evil!

"Animam remito!" says WitchLana. It may be that she's talking about my cousin, Anibal Benito. We pan from the page of the now-soiled book to the small of WitchLana's back, where the familiar tattoo we've come to grow weary of recently is suddenly burned into her back. Sybolism! Literally. "Demon!" the magistrate says. WitchLana just starts cackling. It's not a bad cackle as cackles go. It's actually pretty cacktacular. WitchLana's homegirls aren't cackling. They're thinking about what it'll be like to smell like mesquite-smoked barbecue in about five minutes. The two of them are whining and begging for their lives. The magistrate calls each of them by name, and I forget them as soon as they're out of his mouth, except for Countess Theroux. He says the three of them are accused of practicing the darkest arts. Producing The Swan? "Witchcraft." Oh. He says it's an affront to God, and that they're condemned to burn in the fires of Hell. It's nice of Satan to rent out his fires to France. You really don't want to skimp when you're subcontracted fires of Hell. There's a guy in Budapest, but what you get in discounts you lose in quality brimstone. "...of which you so eagerly seek communion," the magistrate finishes. Like John Kerry at the churches in Florida? WitchLana smiles her witchy smile.

The magistrate nods at his right-hand fire guy. The fire guy, eager to step up to The Show, lights their pyre while singing under his breath, "Come on baby, light my pyre..." "You think this ends with a lick of flame?" WitchLana asks. You mean it doesn't? I guess we could let boars digest your ashes or scatter you into the henhouse or something. We really weren't prepared with a post-witch exit strategy, to be honest. WitchLana says she sleeps but a while, and that her hair will awaken her. Yeah, I imagine it would get pretty tangled and in her face in the morning and...oh, her heir. Heir. Hmm. "And I will have VENGEANCE!" she cries. No, no, haven't you seen Braveheart? You want "FREEDOM!" Or am I thinking of that Al Pacino movie? "ATTICA!" Maybe you should settle for ATTICA!, because I'm not sure you're gonna get VENGEANCE! anytime soon. She cackles some more. The magistrate thinks, "Man, this is one seriously fucked-up chick." More cackling. We zoom out and get an overhead view of the CGI flames engulfing the three French chicks. Nice lighter fluid they had back then.

As the sad "poor crispy witches" music plays, we transition to the flames of a fireplace. The camera goes out of focus for a moment and settles on a now-all-too-familiar tattoo on the small of a very annoying girl's back. Ah yes. The how-you-say? Lana Lang. Jason and Lana Lang are sitting by a very fashionable and decidedly un-Kansan pipe fireplace in her apartment. Jason is asking about a package she's opening that she bought on eBay. Lana says it's from some old guy auctioning it off from Nice. Well that's nice. Lana tells Jason that she had to max out her credit card to get it, but that she couldn't help it because it was calling to her. Jason, who just got fired, is thrilled that his underage girlfriend just spent all her credit on some dumb-ass book. Lana pulls out an aged spellbook from the too-neat bubble wrap. It's the same book Isabelle Theroux spat on earlier. Mmm, I wonder what happens to a bloody loogie after four hundred years. There are symbols on the outside of the book. Jason notes that they look similar to the ones in the cave. Just once I'd like for something on this show to be in Sanskrit or Hebrew or something. Lana says maybe it'll explain what happened when she touched the symbol on the Countess's tomb in Paris. Yes, Lana, the book was written just for you to get some closure on your museum visits. That's surely what the French were thinking about foremost in the seventeenth century.

Lana starts flipping through the book without so much as a pair of comic book-reading gloves. She asks, "How's your Latin?" Jason sticks his tongue in her mouth and says, "Not as good as my French." Only he doesn't, really. He actually says it's not as good as his non-existent Italian. Lana keeps flipping through the book and comes upon the bloody spittle. The fireplace suddenly blows out. Jason goes to see what's up. "Oh my God," Lana says, "this is the symbol from Isabelle's tomb." Jason says that's kind of spooky. Lana runs her fingers up the page and touches the historical loogie. The symbol on Lana's back suddenly glows bright fuchsia. The Pink is back! God help us all. The fireplace bursts into huge flames, singeing the Hell out of Jason. This is where he should go, "Weird tattoos, superpowered half-retarded quarterbacks, a girlfriend who doesn't laugh at my jokes and gets me fired. Seriously? I'm outta here. Man, this is one seriously fucked-up chick." Instead, Jason just goes, "AGGH!" and loses some eyebrows. Lana arches her back in some sort of funky trance, her eyes glowing the same pink color as her tattoo. Her pupils settle on a purple-pink color that goes nicely with the bruises that'll soon be inflicted upon Jason. Jason -- who should be getting an EMS airlift right about now -- brushes himself off and asks if Lana is all right. Lana -- who was about ten feet from the fireplace -- is being asked this by the guy with second-degree burns. Lana stands up, holding the book. She smiles as she touches her stomach and gives Jason a come-hither look. "Never been better," she says. Jason, looking a bit intimidated, says, "Oh, good, because just now when I got a flame to the eye I -- WHAAAAA? Why are you smiling like that?" We go to opening credits.

Somebody SAAAAAAVE us from this episode! I laugh at Lana and the weekly fireball. Payback's a bitch.

Dark stormclouds over the Kent farm. I'm sure that's not any kind of foreshadowing there. Clark is baling some hay, at normal-man speed, when a silver SUV pulls up. It's Lois Lane, who left for all of two episodes. Clark comes over and asks what she's doing out of school. Lois says they're throwing a birthday party for Chloe in his barn...remember? Clark remembers nothing of the sort. Of course, he doesn't even remember what he had for breakfast this morning. He thinks it rhymed with "burial," which he also doesn't remember doing to half the Kryptofreaks in town. Clark's memory, it's a little spotty. Clark gives Lois a glare and says he remembers telling her they couldn't have a party in the barn. "Too late!" she says. The guests have already been invited. She hands Clark an open cardboard box full of frilly decorations. Lois says that if Clark cancels, it would hurt Chloe's feelings, and then Lois would have to hurt Clark. She's not exactly Ms. Lovable Lane, is she? And she looks like she aged about five more years in her two weeks as a college freshman. Lay off the binge drinking, Lois! Lois says she has to get the "wheels" back to her dad soon, so she asks Clark for help with the rest of the stuff in the SUV. Clark is freaking out, because he has a recruiter from Princeton coming in that night. (Snort. Hee.) Yes, given that Princeton's men's football team is about as respected as Texas A&M's rowing team, it's funny to think that Clark might get in based on his brains. You know, it's a big campus. They must just need a super-ass janitor. Clark also mentions that his parents are out of town. Oh really? Lois tells "Smallville" to relax. It'll just be a few people singing "Happy Birthday" and standing around. This party's gonna suck! Clark's got a bad feelin' about this. Just like me when I hit "Play" on the TiVo earlier.

By the tinkling in my scrote, something goofy here of note: Countess Lana is using her newly acquired Witchcraft Chemistry Kit 2000 Pro, which she must have put on her second, newly acquired credit card, to make some nasty yerba. She's got candles, pots, funky tubes, and a mortar and pestle. Somebody really needs to introduce this seventeenth-century witch to the latter-day magic of KitchenAid products. "Hair of two virgins," Countess Lana says. Explease me? She has a list of objects, most of which are already crossed out. Like ta hear it? Heah' it goes: "Wings of a bat." Yeah, Im sure the pet store was real cool with that. "Disemboweled Mexican high-tail bats? Sure, we keep those in the back." "Salamander tails." Well, you can find those in any reputable bookstore. "Petals of a rose." That's mostly just for decoration. "Fungus." That's to remind us of dental hygiene in the 1600s. "Cloves." Sure, why not. "Hair of two virgins." Good luck finding that in 2004. The rest of the list: "TV Guide back issues, 1993-1997," "Herbal Essence Shampoo (Strawberry)," "Ben & Jerry's: Chunky Monkey," "Eye of Forrest Whitaker," "Tongue of Joan Rivers," "Semen of a randy producer (Just kidding! That's already in there!)." Pomegranate is also on the list. Pomegranates rule. Countess Lana says, "We've been a good little girl, haven't we?" as she plucks out a hair from Lana's head. I just placed her voice: I used to date a very attractive actress back in the day, and whenever she was out at a fancy party or wanting to get cast in a slutty/provocative role, she'd put on this airy deep actressy voice that was cool for a few minutes but was extremely grating if you were talking about, say, getting a smoothie at Jamba Juice. "Why of course! Let's to the mango smoothie," she'd say. "That would be lovely." That is exactly the voice that Kristin Kreuk is using for her Countess Lana this week. It gets old really, really fast.

Stately Luthor Manor, but without the establishing shot. A pair of hands clad in a purple shirt are furiously playing piano, a tricky passage known as "The Gargantuan Pleasure Flute in 8 1/2 Measures," by Schubert. It's our favorite bald bad-ass Lex Luthor, and he's got some classical chops. He finishes the piece just as Countess Lana is walking in. "You play beautifully," she tells him. She apologizes for the interruption, but says she wanted to ask a favor. Lex should get out of the LuthorCorp business and just set up a favor shop in his den like Lucy Van Pelt and her advice stand. He asks when he's ever been able to refuse a favor to Lana Lang. Countess Lana asks for a good bottle of wine for Chloe's birthday. Lex says he didn't know it was Chloe's twenty-first birthday yet. Lana says she wanted to raise a glass with Chloe and Lois. She promises, with batting eyelashes, not to tell anyone where she got it and says it'll be their little secret. Lex says he has a nice light Riesling he could spare that won't do much damage. As Lex moves to get it, Countess Lana says she'd rather have a vintage merlot, somewhere from the south of France, perhaps in the Montblahblah or the Rue de Blah Blah region. Lex says that her tastes have matured from a summer in Paris. Not really; she's still listening to Ace of Base. Lana eyes the manuscript page still on display that was supposed to have been locked away in a LuthorCorp vault a few weeks ago.

Lex emerges with a bottle of wine -- a clever if pedantic vintage. Lex says it's a 1902 from some damn vineyard in some tiny-ass village. He says it'll make quite the birthday gift. Countess Lana asks what this is. This manuscript crap. Lex says it's an illuminated manuscript page. It's illuminated in neon. He says he picked it up in St. Petersburg. Before he can finish his story, Countess Lana cuts in: "You're lying." In a rare moment of being at a loss for words, Lex says, "Whut?" Countess Lana turns at him and says he knows the page's true nature, adding, "The map was not meant for you." Lex wants to know how she knew about the hidden map. "Because..." she begins. "Vanessa!" Countess Lana yells. "Semprini!" The map has disappeared. Lex asks what she just did. Countess Lana does a horizontal "Hook 'em Horns" at Lex with a tiny purple swirly ball floating between her fingers. Lex is frozen. "You seek the stones, don't you?" The stones of a farmboy? Why yes, ma'am. Countess Lana says they can't have that. She takes the bottle of wine out of Frozen Lex's hand. Countess Lana tells Lex that he was right; he does need more piano practice. She tells him to go play some more: "Infinitus." Countess Lana leaves. Lex walks robotically to the piano and starts to play. His face shows that he can't control his body and is wondering what's happening. Lex keeps playing, fast, as his eyes look worried. It's the piano lesson from hell!